Parting of Seas

By Jordan Dalzell May 4, 2020

The water doesn’t part for you this time,
will not kill for you again.

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U of M Students React to Campus Apartheid Wall on Rosh Hashana

By Nicole Zelniker November 1, 2016

At the University of Michigan, many Jewish students spent the morning of Oct. 4 attending Rosh Hashanah services. That same morning, students in Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) were getting ready to protest. “I just saw these two huge walls,” said first-year student Juliet Wishner. She also saw signs supporting BDS. SAFE, a…

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High Holidays and Midterm Season Survival

By Sara Weissman October 20, 2016

Original version published in The Daily Californian.  When I was preparing to come to UC Berkeley, my biggest fear wasn’t the academic rigor of college, making friends, or getting used to the sometimes-unidentifiable food at Crossroads dining hall – though those were definitely all high up on my list. It was observing Jewish holidays, including Shabbat, and…

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Reflections on National Novel Writing Month

By Hannah Rozenblat October 13, 2016

There’s a good reason Jews are referred to as the “people of the word.” Our focus on texts is a long-standing tradition that encourages respect, even reverence, for the written word. Words are meaningful, powerful. They can create entire worlds. I highly appreciated this concept even as a child when I used to create fictional…

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Reclaiming “off the derekh:” A High Holidays meditation

By Amram Altzman September 16, 2015

As a child, my rabbis and Judaic studies teachers cautioned me against straying “off the derekh,” which almost literally translates to off of the Orthodox straight-and-narrow. If we did, though, then the High Holidays were a time when we could return to once again being on the straight, singular path that Orthodoxy provided. As a…

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The Only Jew in Yellowstone

By Amber Ikeman October 20, 2014

I’ve been the token Jew for much of my life. People have referred to me as “my Jewish friend, Amber” and some have told me that I’m the only Jew they’ve ever met, especially out here in Wyoming. Since I went to Israel for the first time 7 years ago, I have successfully lived up…

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Popping New York’s Jewish Bubble

By Jonathan Katz September 9, 2014

I grew up in the New York area: capital of the world, city of no rival, the Fourth Rome (defeating the Third, and there shall be no Fifth). True, I could note that this place – city and suburbs thereof – is overconfident, maddeningly arrogant, and rude to a horrifying degree. Yet it was a…

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Coming of Age as South Dakota’s Token Jew

By Andy Engelmann March 26, 2014

Two calls, a text, and three Facebook messages, all in less than a week.  That was how I learned about B’rith Shalom, South Dakota’s first Jewish student culture club at South Dakota State University.  You see, for years, I had been known as “The Jew.”  Growing up in the middle the Sioux Empire, we were…

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Anorexia and Shabbat

By Jourdan Stein March 14, 2014

Third grade lunch at Solomon Schechter Jewish Day School. All my friends are sitting around eating Cheetos and sharing sandwiches. Me, I’m staring at the clock waiting for the little and the big hand to both land on the twelve so that I can throw the untouched lunch my mother packed me into the trash…

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UCSD: Please Stop “Accommodating” Me.

By Zev Hurwitz January 30, 2014

This piece originally appeared in the University of California San Diego Guardian in response to a new University of California policy of avoiding conflicts between  Jewish holidays and move-in week by cutting a week out of winter break. This decision was made without any student input.  It is being reprinted with permission of the author….

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New Years 2013 Was a Lifetime Ago

By Dani Plung January 8, 2014

Well, by the Gregorian calendar, we have officially lived in the year 2014 for a week. For one thing, this means I will spend about three more weeks dating assignments “2013,” only to see autocorrect bluntly demonstrate the error of my ways.  For another, this means that both the Jewish and secular seasonal winter holidays…

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A New Year of Peace?

By Emily Greenspan September 23, 2013

Just a few weeks ago, the White House released a video of President Obama wishing the American Jewish community a sweet New Year.  Obama emphasized the importance of the newly-resumed peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the responsibility of American Jews to act to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now…

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Facebook + Jews in Mumbai = Rosh Hashanah Seder…?

By David A.M. Wilensky September 27, 2012

Gabe Weinstein, our man in India, writes today at the Ohio University study abroad blog about spending Rosh Hashanah with some of the Jews of Mumbai. A member of the Jewish community there discovered him via Facebook (because of this recent piece Gabe did for New Voices), which led to him spending the holiday with the…

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What to Do With All Those Apples

By H. B. Rubin September 20, 2012

So, Rosh Hashana is over. Your excuse to not go attend classes for “religious reasons” is moot for the next ten days. The crazy fruits have been eaten, the apple-themed shul outfits have been worn, and your ears are a bit hung over from their shofar drunk. But wait, what do you do with all…

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Why I support the Park 51 community center

By admin September 27, 2010

This is a post by Moriel Rothman, the president of J Street U and a senior at Middlebury College. The recent rise in American Islamophobia has taken many forms. This past May, someone attempted to bomb a Florida mosque in which 60 worshippers were praying. Perhaps more disturbing than the specific event itself was the…

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